Old and Older

George Carlin was just in El Paso doing a show. I missed it because I was out of town but I have seen him twice here. This isn’t about whether you’re a George Carlin fan, though I find the vast majority of those who appreciate his humor to be male. My wife doesn’t like him.

What I’m discussing here is the joy one gets when following the career of someone you like over a long period of time. I became a Carlin fan back in the 60’s when he still wore suits and was on Ed Sullivan and Mary Tyler Moore. He was just funny to me. When he changed his act to include “dirty words” and anti-god and government rhetoric, he was still funny.

I’m fifty-four now and Carlin just turned seventy-one. That means I’m much younger than him and will likely outlive him and be very sad when I hear that he’s dead. As I get older I find that celebrity deaths bring varying degrees of sadness. Just today I saw that Dick Martin of Rowan and Martin passed away. My thought was, “That’s too bad, he was pretty funny in his time.”

Some deaths of the folks you grew up admiring get to you. I was very young when John Kennedy was assassinated but kind of understood the importance. When his brother and Martin Luther King were murdered I was a little older and I better understood what those deaths meant to the country.

Then there are the dumb celebrity deaths, mostly from excess. Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison all died within a year of each other. Why do these people have to drink and drug themselves to death? You had John Belushi, River Phoenix and the list goes on.

When you’re watching the Oscars or Emmy’s don’t you pay attention to the “Who Died This Year Segment?” Okay, I’ve never heard of many of the Costume Designers or Cinematographers but when you see someone you recognize, but didn’t know had died, don’t you turn to who you’re watching it with and say, “Hey, I didn’t know he was dead?”

I think the most common celebrity that people from my age group are surprised that he’s not dead is Ernest Borgnine. I don’t know why, I just always think he’s dead. Then I hear about him doing something and I’m happy he’s not. I will be sad when he goes.

Someday my obituary will be in the paper and someone who I know won’t see it and will be surprised when they hear about it. That’s fine, I love surprises.

Keep George and Ernest in your thoughts.